


Pillars Of Salt

by entanglednow



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Demon Summoning, Gen, Mild Gore, Mystery, Ouija Board
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27205288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: There are demons going missing, Crowley is asked to investigate.
Series: 13 Days of Halloween [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977847
Comments: 110
Kudos: 236





	Pillars Of Salt

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'Ouija' prompt, for the 13 Days of Halloween list of prompts, made by racketghost.
> 
> I'm not sure if this quite deserves the M rating, but I'm going with it anyway.

"Crowley."

Crowley freezes in his chair, because Beelzebub's voice is not what he wanted to hear coming out of the face of a balding late-night newsreader. He was just starting to relax in his own flat, just starting to consider some bold decorating choices that didn't have to reflect a certain Hellish aesthetic. He can't help the hiss of frustration at the way he tenses and instinctively tries to slip into the coat of ' _pretend to be them as hard as you can_.'

"We had an agreement," he says instead. "You're not supposed to contact me any more."

The balding newsreader fixes him with a hard look. "I'm aware of that, these are extenuating circumstances."

Crowley offers the Prince of Hell the best scowl he can manage. "I don't work for you any more. I'm retired." He's not quite past finding that amusing yet. Aziraphale's delicate description of the way they'd ripped themselves free with desperation and trickery.

"Listen to what I have to say." It's flat, but there's a push to it, as if reaching out to him was a last resort. The end of a long series of options that Beelzebub has exhausted. If the Prince of Hell had ever asked for anything, Crowley thinks this is what it would sound like. Now isn't that a strange and unsettling thought.

"Fine, I'll hear you out," he says. Mostly for curiosity's sake.

The newsreader folds his large pink hands together. "Someone in a village called Oving has been summoning demons."

Crowley waits for something else. There are instances of demons getting summoned every so often. Usually the ones who aren't strong enough to resist it. The experiments and the runts and the semi-sentient creatures that slink around the corners of Hell. They're powerful enough to cause trouble for a bit, often getting pegged as a poltergeist or a vengeful spirit, but it's really not a big deal.

"None of them have come back," Beelzebub adds.

Crowley turns his head to look at the television. "None of them?" They usually slink back within a few days. Earth is difficult to inhabit if you aren't used to it, and the younger ones have corporations that are more animal than human. They weren't built to last.

"It's been a month, and twelve are missing."

Crowley raises both eyebrows. Twelve is a lot, even for a pretty much expendable resource. So someone's summoning them and then keeping them? It's a fairly horrifying thought, but it's really not Crowley's job to care any more. He'd sent in enough reports about how shitty humans can be.

"Send someone else," Crowley says flatly, and there's something of a thrill in being able to tell the Prince of Hell no without fear of being dragged back to Hell and made to pay for it. "You have agents that have been on earth before."

"I did," Beelzebub says slowly. "None of them have come back either."

Crowley goes very still, he can feel the instinctive denial forming in his throat. Because Beelzebub wouldn't have sent any old runt that could be summoned or controlled. They'd have wanted to put a stop to it as quickly and efficiently as possible. They would have sent a proper demon. They would have made sure.

"None of them? How many did you send?" he asks.

Beelzebub works the man's mouth, teeth grinding in a way that clearly doesn't want to answer. "Six," they admit eventually.

Crowley pulls his feet down from the desk. A dozen runts and six demons had gone missing. That's absurd - that's impossible.

"Did you tell -"

"Of course I did. Which is why I'm talking to you. Something is happening in this village and you need to find out what it is."

The wording of that rankles, because Crowley was under Hell's thumb for a long, long time. "I _need_ to find out, do I?" he says testily.

Beelzebub ignores him.

"Find out what's happening, put a stop to it, and Hell will be -" They stop, and there's an audible and angry buzz of insects. "Hell will be in your debt."

They're scared, Crowley realises, something on earth is disappearing demons and they're scared.

"Why me?" he demands. "Because I'm expendable?"

"Obviously," Beelzebub admits, which Crowley can appreciate. "But also because you're the only demon who has a hope of succeeding."

Crowley has a horrible feeling that he already knows, but he asks anyway.

"Why's that?"

"You're immune to Holy Water." It's offered reluctantly, as if Beelzebub still isn't sure how Crowley managed it, or when it happened. "Which means you're unlikely to be killed outright if that's what they're using. There were never any reports sent. If nothing else you can tell us what you discover."

That says a lot of very nasty things about what might be going on here. None of which Crowley likes. Is something killing demons on purpose? Is something _human_ killing demons? It seems unthinkable. No, not six demons, nothing human could get away with that, it's impossible.

Beelzebub glares at him for a second longer. Before the newsreader's face smooths out, and the bland drone of the news continues.

-

He considers telling Aziraphale, though only briefly. Too many demons involved, too many demons who may be held captive in some way, angry, vicious and possibly desperate for freedom or revenge. Enough not to worry too much about what they'd have to go through on their way out. And without the angel he can use Hellfire if things get ugly. Hell can bill him later.

No, instead he leaves him a message perfectly designed so that he won't worry, or have any reason to come looking for him, then he grabs the Bentley's keys and heads downstairs.

Summoning demons isn't that difficult. Draw the right symbols, put some effort into it, sacrifice a rabbit, a chicken or a goat and that'll get you _something_ , even if it's just an imp. Though that was still more than enough Hell on earth to cause trouble in a house.

It's a quiet village.

Of course it is.

That's always the way it goes. Hell will go to all the trouble of setting up the heart of civilisation to be a cauldron of sin, ripe for occult activities, and then human beings will immediately sneak out to the picturesque countryside to summon demons. Every single time.

Crowley parks carelessly next to one of those stupid picturesque front lawns, a street away from the actual house in question. Then he gets just close enough to _look_ at it. As far as he can tell there's nothing wrong with the house itself. It's not the image of a house hiding something else, it hasn't been corrupted in any obvious way. Neither does it feel Holy, which he's something of an expert in. There's nothing wrong at all from the outside, nothing tucked in behind a facade, nothing that even suggests there's anything unnatural inside. If he hadn't been told that demons had gone missing here he would have strolled right on in. Though it occurs to him that without further information he might still have to do just that.

It's more of a careful saunter in the end.

He finds the door open.

The inside of the house smells like death and that's something odd, because Crowley should have smelled that from the outside, he should have tasted it coming up the path. The hallway is almost entirely clean, almost entirely undisturbed, save for a half-folded rug corner and the spill of a few pieces of pot pourri from a small table.

The smell of blood is both old and new. Both human and demon. But Crowley can feel that the house is empty now, abandoned and uninhabited, its owners dead. Whatever had summoned the demons here is no longer inside. Though he's not stupid enough to close any of his senses, still carefully prodding the shape of the world for anything that shouldn't be here, anything that might still be a threat. He's not sure what that might be yet though - a book, a powerful artifact, or maybe a weapon stolen from Heaven?

He carefully steps his way deeper into the house.

He stops at the end of the hall, because there are four severed fingers in the doorway of the kitchen, the stumps shrivelled enough to say they were lost days ago. There's also a messy splash of rusty blood on the floor, dry enough to have been spilled at the same time. The wood of the door frame is broken on one side, gouged by nails on the other, as if someone had grabbed for it - the matching cracked tile on the floor shows where they fell.

Crowley very carefully avoids the remains and moves into the kitchen. It takes him a few minutes to work out how many people died in the room. The pieces, he eventually decides, make up two demons and one human. Though the human has been dead much longer. He silently steps over what he can, and frowns his way through what he can't. He'll need new boots after this.

The living room is the worst of it. More old human remains mixed in with what's left of the demons. Though if they'd been discorporated this violently they should have shown up back in Hell.

He's distracted away from the contemplation when he registers a scraping noise. He spins on the carpet, fingers snapping into flame. There's no one there, though the orange light illuminates the flat shape of a Ouija board, the planchette slightly crooked.

It's a game, thought up by humans more than a hundred years ago. It shouldn't technically be able to summon anything. But it has enough in common with the ancient practices of spirit invocation, and it's familiar enough to the old conduit beliefs that people were convinced it could summon the dead, or demons. They've given it power, they've made it something real. The Ouija board is what it is now.

It must be what was used to summon these demons here and then - do this to them, somehow. But where would they have gotten the power for that?

Whoever was responsible seems to no longer be here. Though Crowley has no intention of letting his guard down. Not until he knows who and how and why. Not until he has something he can take back to Hell and -

There's a slow dragging noise, plastic on wood, he's not responsible for it and he turns his head very slowly towards the table. For a second there's no movement at all, and then the plastic triangle of the planchette slowly turns, and then shifts quickly across the dark letters.

C...R...A...W...L...Y

Crowley goes very still, spine contracting in warning. Because that isn't just the name he was given when he'd first clawed his way gasping out of boiling sulphur. There's more behind it, there's a weight of tangled serpent coils and misery and obedience and the thick, choking weight of impossible grief at everything lost. The board is _speaking_ his second name. The one he'd crawled out of Hell with. 

It shouldn't be possible, they needed to be written in the summoner's own hand, or spoken out loud. It was part of the reason humans rarely summoned higher demons, they just didn't have the throats to call them. This piece of plastic, no matter what sort of spirit it was a conduit for, shouldn't be capable of this. The dead aren't supposed to be able to summon demons at all.

Unless it wasn't one of the dead.

C...R...A...W...L...Y. The board writes again. C...R...A...W...L...Y.

The last is intent and demanding. Crawly knows that if he'd still used that name - if that name was still _his_ \- that it would already be too late, that he wouldn't be leaving this room. This isn't a demon, he would know, he would feel it.

He debates whether it's safe to speak. But he's angry enough to want to know who's doing this.

"What are you?" he asks the board.

The planchette simply turns until it's pointed at him, and he can't tell if that's curious or threatening.

"Did you kill all of these demons?" There's no answer to that. The air in the house feels heavier now, as if it's being compressed, or as if someone - something - is trying to displace it. "What do you want?" Crowley asks instead

The plastic turns a slow circle, finishes pointing in his direction again, and Crowley begins the process of shutting down every possible access point into his corporation. It shouldn't be possible for anything to enter him without his consent, or a very messy battle of wills, but his skin is prickling and he can feel sweat on the back of his neck.

There's a moment of complete stillness, and then the planchette is writing again.

Y...O...U...R...B...O...D...I...E...S...A...R...E...S...T...R...O...N...G...E...R

Crowley looks down at the stretches of bloody skin on the floor that used to be demons just like him. The bones that have been shattered outwards, as if something was forced into them harder than their corporations could stand. Hard enough that it had completely obliterated the demons inside.

"What are you?" he asks.

The board is silent.

"What are you?" he insists. "Answer me."

There's nothing but stillness for a long moment, and then the planchette moves, in quick drags that tear into the surface of the board.

T...H...E...O...U...T...S...I...D...E.

L...E...T...M...E...I...N.

Crowley stops breathing entirely, stops pretending he's human at all.

L...E...T...M...E...I...N.

He backs his way to the front door, ignoring the crunch of broken bones and the slippery texture of blood beneath his feet. He can hear the planchette rattling, still moving, still demanding.

Once he's out on the cold street Crowley snaps his fingers and summons as much hellfire as he can physically hold, and then spreads his fingers and flings it towards the house. He watches it lick at the door and crawl across the windows, watches it spread across the brick and up onto the roof. He watches it slither in every place there's a gap and _burn_.

He stays until there's nothing left of the house but melted bricks, charred wood and ash.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Pillars of Salt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316435) by [SkyAsimaru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyAsimaru/pseuds/SkyAsimaru)




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